Starting a Revolution…in academia | Singapore and the United States: A New Cold War History

" ... Recently, the American Historical Association released a statement proposing the embargo of History PhD dissertations for up to six years. In a nutshell, it means that a new history PhD graduate can prevent online access to his/her work for up to six years. Wait a minute, why embargo research when researchers want to share their work? Here’s why: in the American academic system, especially in history, a published book is still a requirement for tenureship. If an assistant professor can’t publish a book within six years, it’s almost impossible to get tenured. After figuring out the complexities of their subject of research in their magnum opus, historians do not want to make their dissertation accessible online because their careers are on the line! Here comes the disturbing part (sorry to keep you waiting…). Open access  or digital publishing has been around for a while now. Like a traditional publisher, most digital presses put manuscripts through a rigorous peer-review process. So there is no difference in quality of the work published – if it’s not up to the standard of experts in the field, a manuscript will surely be rejected regardless of which publisher it is submitted to. (It is not hard to detect that some traditional publishers turn out crap quite consistently.) Furthermore, an advantage of digital publication is that you can actually count the number of downloads – a better indicator than the number of copies a physical book has been sold. But will a book published by an e-press win a junior academic tenureship? Unfortunately, no. That’s the problem. Junior academics are sure to destroy their careers if they publish with an e-press, and this is wrong ... I have been advised NOT to send my dissertation to a digital publisher unless it is my second or third book. I appreciate the good intentions behind that advice, but I will NOT take it. I want my work to be published in one year, not five. I want my book to be read by peers and students for free, not for a hundred dollars. If there is a need for a change in academe, let it start by discarding the silly, irrational faith that we put in traditional publishers which don’t always measure up to high-quality e-presses. If there is something that needs fixing in academia, it should start from making traditional presses with inflated reputations obsolete. They contribute to a tyrannical system that feeds on the time, efforts and anxieties of early career researchers."